Court Evidence Exposes SBF's Bribe Payments to Chinese Authorities

III. The Defendant’s Scheme to Bribe Chinese Government Officials

In addition to the offenses of conviction, Bankman-Fried was also charged in a severed count with conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by engaging in bribery of one or more Chinese government officials. While the Government ultimately determined that it was not in the interests of justice to proceed with a second trial, that was in part because the Court may still consider this criminal conduct at sentencing as the underlying conduct was proven at trial. (Tr. 827-40).

In early 2021, the Public Security Bureau in Changge, China froze two cryptocurrency trading accounts held by Alameda on two of China’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. (Tr. 827-28). Collectively the accounts contained approximately $1 billion in cryptocurrency. (Tr. 828). Bankman-Fried was informed that the accounts had been frozen by Chinese law enforcement authorities as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation of a particular Alameda trading counterparty. (Tr. 827-28). Shortly after the accounts were frozen, Bankman-Fried directed a handful of FTX/Alameda Chinese employees that Bankman-Fried trusted and/or had connections to China to try to get the accounts unfrozen. (Tr. 827). Those early attempts included communicating directly with representatives of the Chinese exchanges; retaining local Chinese attorneys to negotiate with Chinese law enforcement; and with the assistance of Salame, opening new accounts on the Chinese exchanges in the names of Thai sex workers, and attempting to transfer the cryptocurrency from the frozen accounts to the new accounts in an effort to circumvent the Chinese authorities’ freeze orders. (Tr. 829-30). Bankman-Fried was updated about the status of these efforts. (Tr. 830).

In November 2021, after several months of failed attempts to unfreeze the accounts, Bankman-Fried directed one Chinese FTX employee to make a multi-million-dollar bribe to government officials to have the accounts unfrozen. (Tr. 830-34, 839-40; GX-1631). BankmanFried told Ellison and another Alameda employee that cryptocurrency transfers should be made to private cryptocurrency addresses provided by the Chinese FTX employee to unfreeze the accounts. (Tr. 832). On or about November 16, 2021, the first bribe payment of cryptocurrency then worth approximately $40 million was transferred from Alameda’s main trading account to a private cryptocurrency wallet. Shortly thereafter, the accounts were unfrozen. After confirmation that the accounts were unfrozen, Bankman-Fried authorized the transfer of an additional approximately $100 million of dollars in cryptocurrency to complete the bribe. (Tr. 832, 842-43, GX-64).